Assassin's Creed is an experience that falls between two stools.
Before I played this, I'd seen a number of clips of the gameplay and it looked absolutely wonderful... and
it does, but when the shine on such a game has faded after the first hour, it's the content that's lacking.
This game has a well weird start to it that seems more akin to Life on Mars than an action console game.
In fact, the introduction about how you get into the game proper in the first place is really long-winded
and got on my nerves. The idea is that your ancestor's memories are transferred into your brain and you act
out like they would. The same kind of thing crops up later on and is so unnecessary - you don't need to pretend
we're playing a game full of AI and computer-generated imagery... we already are!
Assassin's Creed:
No, you can't go for a swim
The general plot of what you're meant to be doing centres around Altair, an assassin who has fallen from grace
after failing to bump off the Templar Leader and wants to climb back up the ladder. Taking place in 1191 AD,
when the Third Crusade was tearing the Holy Land apart and Sinan, the Assassins' Leader sends you out to execute
a number of men involved, most of whom sound like they have a name that looks like an accident in a scrabble bag.
So, job done, right? Not quite.
A number of aspects here come about rather like the
Hitman
series, such as with hiding from the enemy. Do it for a little while and they'll soon forget you're about.
Of the various missions, listening into others' conversations and then pickpocketing someone is a fairly tedious
exercise, as is blending into the background by mixing with scholars or riding a horse, upsetting the locals and
then galloping further away from them so they give up... and repeat.
Assassin's Creed: Get into a fight
and then go running off...
At times this reminded me of the Sega Dreamcast title
Shenmue. That one had great graphics, was overhyped
and had characters forcing you to go to bed every so often (to break up the days, that is, not for sexual favours).
similarly, there are long-winded cut scenes that come too often and go on a fair bit.
There were traces of the title
Nomad Soul
in there too, a game that looked and sounded nice too, but just didn't play too well and sometimes left you
running about in frustration trying to find out what to do next. There is some direction here, but you can end
up going for a wonder sometimes.
Assassin's Creed: Climb up
a View Point and then jump off...
Assassin's Creed looks lovely, with graphics that, if I was to nit-pick, would allow you to spot a
slightly too-near draw distance, but perhaps this is so that the visuals can be so lush? All that said,
before long you start to notice its shortcomings, such as regular inhabitants of the village saying variations
on a theme of "What is that man doing?" as you run about like a looney, including up thee walls, since
none of them have yet been introduced to the concept of parkour :)
It's also nice being able to climb up a ladder part of the way, swing round it somehow as someone comes and
attacks you, and then swing back again. In fact, the ability to be very agile including to perform a kill and
quickly escape will give the next
Tomb Raider
episode something to aim for. (And on the subject of murdering, although you can try and grab the baddies before
doing the deed, most times it's just easier to button-mash and bump 'em off good and hard).
Assassin's Creed:
A glitch in the game
Other observations and irritations in this title include the ability to help save a citizen by killing the
attackers surrounding him, but they're the same old kind of attackers you'll always see and once saved he just
tells you he'll make sure others have heard of his tale.
You can collect flags of various denominations throughout the game, but with 100 of each this is much like the
same kind of thing in the GTA games: you'll find them when you find them, and if you have nothing better to do
than to track down all 100 of each type... you clearly don't have a day-job.
Assassin's Creed: Running up
and then suprising the enemy!
Playability is a pain when you're in a fight and can't seem to break away from it and run off. Your man just
seems to want to stand there and take a beating(!)
In addition, it's the seemingly arbitrary behaviour of letting you run through scenes and then flicking to a
'more recent memory' that really gets on your nerves and you just want to play a normal game but with the same
cool graphics and style.
Come on, Ubisoft, you've got a wonderful and inventive graphics engine here. Please do something great with it
next time.
Jade Raymond talks
about Assassin's Creed.
This is a piece about how there should be more women involved in the making of video games, including an
interview with Jade Raymond, producer of Assassin's Creed, out now on Xbox 360 and PS3, as
well as coming out on PC at the end of February.
GRAPHICS SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC PLAYABILITY ENJOYMENT
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
